US
Marines Occupy Haitian Capital
By Keith Jones
Worl
Socialist Website
02 March 2004
Deposed
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his wife have told several
US Congressmen that US military personnel forced him onto a plane and
spirited him from the Caribbean-island state as the final act in a US-sponsored
coup against his government.
Representative Charles
Rangel told CNN that Aristide had said that he was kidnapped,
that he resigned under pressure, that he was taken to a Central African
country against his will. California Congresswoman Maxine Waters
said Aristides wife had said her husband had been forced
to leave. A US embassy official had told Haitis elected
president he had to go nowthat if he didnt go he would
be killed and a lot of Haitians would be killed.
Randall Robertson,
former president of the liberal research group TransAfrica, said Aristide
had telephoned him to say that he was being held under guard by French
and African soldiers in a presidential palace in the capital of the
Central African Republic. He asked that I tell the world that
it is a coup, that he was abducted by American soldiers and put aboard
a plane.
These charges have
been denied by top officials in the Bush administration. Presidential
spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed them as nonsense and
conspiracy theories. Secretary of State Colin Powell, feigning
hurt that he could be accused of such criminal conduct, told reporters,
He was not kidnapped. We did not force him on the airplane. He
went on the plane willingly.
The denials of the
Bush administration are unconvincing.
French radio station
RTL broadcast an interview with a frightened old man whom
its correspondent came across when he visited Aristides residence
and who said he was Aristides caretaker. He told RTL, The
American army came to take [Aristide] away at two in the morning ...
The Americans forced him out with weapons.
Mondays edition
of the Montreal daily La Pressewhich appeared before Aristides
charges were levelled or at least publicly knowncarried a report
from its special correspondent in Haiti, Marie-Claude Malboeuf. She
says a source told her handcuffs had had to be put on the ex-president
of Haiti before he took the threats of the diplomats demanding
his resignation seriously.
Moreover, US officials
had bluntly told Aristide that the US military personnel deployed in
Haiti would do nothing to protect him, let alone his government, from
the fascist gunmen poised to invade Port-au-Prince. Colin Powell personally
called Ron Dellums, a former Congressman whom Aristide had hired to
lobby on behalf of the Haitian government, to tell him that the US would
not guarantee the Haitian presidents personal safety. And when
guards from Aristides security teamemployees of the San
Francisco-based Steele Foundation and themselves presumably ex-US military
personnelcontacted the US embassy in Port-au-Prince to ask if
they could count on American protection in the event of a rebel attack
they were told, no, they would have to fend for themselves.
A Bush administration
that came to power through stealing of the 2000 elections, dragged the
American people into an illegal war of conquest against Iraq with lies
about weapons of administration, and is staffed at its highest levels
by persons responsible for countless imperialist outrages from authorizing
mass bombings in Vietnam to sponsoring death squads in Central America,
is certainly capable of kidnapping Haitis elected president. The
Republican Party establishment, which supported the military coup that
deposed Aristide in 1991 and opposed his restoration to power by the
Clinton administration in 1994, has never forgiven nor forgotten the
defrocked priests denunciations of US imperialismno matter
that when in power Aristide implemented IMF-dictated structural reforms.
But in the final
analysis, whether Aristide caved in before US bullying and threats and
tendered his resignation or was press-ganged onto a US military plane,
does not change the fundamental nature of what has taken place in Haiti:
The Bush administration has overthrown Haitis elected government.
And it has done so in league with a self-proclaimed political opposition
dominated by Haitis traditional elite and led by notorious henchmen
of the Duvalier and Cédras dictatorships and with a rebel militia
led by former officers of the disbanded Haitian army and the FRAPH death
squad.
That US marines
and the fascist rebels simultaneously made their entry into Port-au-Prince
over the past two days only underscores that they have been acting in
concert.
As the fascist rebels
swept across Haiti during the month of February, the US, France and
Canada insisted they would not intervene in Haiti till Aristide reached
a political settlement with the opposition Democratic Platform. Yet
they knew full well the opposition, which they had helped organize and
finance, was determined to have the head of Aristide. When the opposition
rejected a settlement sponsored by the US and France that would have
reduced Aristide to a titular role, Washington and Paris placed the
blame on Aristide and started pressing for his resignation.
Once Aristide was
deposed all obstacles to a US intervention disappeared. Within hours
of his departure, the first of a force of Marines that could eventually
number 2000 began occupying the Port-au-Prince airport and the UN Security
Council authorized a US-led peacekeeping mission.
So incontrovertible
is the evidence of the rebel leaders involvement in bloody repression
under various Haitian dictatorshipsthe New York Times headlined
a report Veterans of Past Murderous Campaigns are Leading Haitis
New Rebellionthat US Secretary of State Powell has felt
it necessary to say, without providing any names, that some of the rebels
are thugs who should be excluded from a role in Haitian
politics.
But there is no
question that a deal is being prepared in which the rebel force will
be incorporated into Haitis government, likely becoming the core
of a revived army.
The Democratic Platform
has rushed to embrace the rebels, who are styling themselves the Front
de libération. Forces armées dHaiti (Liberation
FrontArmed Forces of Haiti.) On Sunday Evans Paul, a former mayor
of Port-au-Prince and prominent opposition spokesman, told La Presse,
We have to improvise an emergency security system. I await Guy
Philippe (the principal rebel commander) for discussions. Meanwhile,
André Apaid, the US citizen and sweatshop owner who has emerged
as the principal opposition spokesman declared, The rebels must
be part of the solution, because they are Haitians too.
On Monday leaders
of the Democratic Platform met with rebel leaders including Philippe,
a US-trained former Haitian officer who according to Human Rights Watch
earned a reputation for brutality while serving as a police chief and
who in 2001 attempted to overthrow Aristides government, and Louis-Jodel
Chamblain, the co-founder of the FRAPH death squad.
Emerging from the
meeting, Paul again praised the rebels, in particular Philippe Chamblain,
who, according to Canadas Globe and Mail, said he wanted to thank
the US, France and Canada for allowing us to get rid of Aristide.
Chamblain added that he had no fear of being called to account for his
role as an organizer of murder and terror under the Cédras dictatorship.
The meeting was
preceded by a rebel rally that took place under the watch of US Marines
who were posted as guards at Haitis presidential palace. According
to US Colonel David Berger, head of the US Marine contingent now deploying
in Haiti, I have no instructions to go about disarmament.
The US and French forces have set as their objective securing unspecified
key sites in Haitis capital, meaning the rebels have
free rein over most of Port-au-Prince.
Over the past two
months, the international media has largely served as a mouthpiece for
the Democratic Platform, repeating its grossly exaggerated claims about
the level of irregularities in the 2000 elections and ignoring the oppositions
own, far longer and notorious anti-democratic record and its willingness,
like its US sponsors, to join with fascists in toppling Haitis
elected president.
In keeping with
this, most reports since Aristides fall have focused on the celebrations
in the elite and middle class areas of Port-au-Prince. But Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation reporter Neil Macdonald admitted that in the
slums of Haitis capital the mood is sullen.
There also have
been scattered, harrowing reports of a bloody settling of accounts,
directed perhaps in the first instance at the armed-gangs that supported
Aristide, the chimères, but which have as their fundamental object
reasserting the unfettered domination of Haitis elite over the
countrys largely illiterate, impoverished and malnourished masses.
The Miami Herald
quoted a business-owner armed with a machine gun as saying, Basically,
whoever is bringing peace, were going to work with. There
were widespread killings with guns and machetes as the gangs, known
as chimères, tried to defend themselves against vengeance,
reported Canwests Sue Montgomery.
Among the first
acts of the rebels on arriving in Port-au-Prince was to release from
prison a large number of former military personnel held for their role
in suppressing popular opposition to the Cédras dictatorship
or conspiring against the subsequent elected government.
The USs role
in toppling an elected president by conniving with, if not organizing,
a rebellion led by fascist thugs has drawn criticism from other Caribbean
governments. No doubt they fear the readiness of the regions great
powersthe US and Franceto brazenly violate traditional democratic
norms. Declared Jamaican prime minister and current CARICOM chairman
P.J. Patterson, The removal of President Aristide ... sets a dangerous
precedent for democratically elected governments anywhere and everywhere,
as it promotes the removal of duly elected persons from office by the
power of rebel forces.
Some sections of
the US political establishment have also made criticisms of the Bush
administrations role in the events in Haiti, but mainly from the
standpoint that it should not let France take the initiative in the
crisis and out of concern that further instability in Haiti could precipitate
an exodus of poor Haitians to the shores of Florida. The New York Times,
in what constituted an apologia for Bushs fomenting of a fascist
rebellion to effect regime change, criticized the current
administration for bad tactics. Mr. Bushs hesitation [in
deploying troops to Haiti] leaves Washington looking as if it withheld
the Marines until Mr. Aristide yielded power, leaving Haitians at the
mercy of some of the countrys most vicious criminal gangs.
Bush, for his part,
in a chilling display of his contempt for democracy and disdain for
the Haitian people declared Sunday, once Aristide was driven from office
and the US ambassador to Haiti had presided over the swearing in of
the head of the countrys supreme court as the next president,
that the Haitian constitution is working. No less foul were
the remarks of French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. He boasted
that Aristides departure boasted had been the result of
perfect co-ordination between Washington and Paris.